If you’re occupied with shopping for one in all AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs, akin to the superb Ryzen 7 3700X, then you might need to take into consideration pairing it with one in all their new X570 motherboards. AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs nonetheless work with older AM4 motherboards, in fact, together with these with X470 or B450 chipsets, however they might want a BIOS replace earlier than you can begin utilizing it (test our motherboard / CPU combo guide for more information), which isn’t the case for the out-of-the-box prepared X570 boards. X570 boards additionally help the brand new super-fast PCIe 4.Zero customary, which may chuck twice as a lot knowledge round than their PCIe 3.Zero predecessors – as much as 64GB/s in comparison with 32GB/s.
That doesn’t imply a lot proper now, admittedly, as there are nonetheless treasured few PCIe 4.Zero gadgets round to make the most of all that additional pace. However, in the event you’re the sort who likes to look forward when building their PC, MSI’s MPG X570 Gaming Edge (Wi-Fi) motherboard is a superb place to begin.
Priced at £220 / $210, it’s fairly a bit costlier than a whole lot of older X470 boards you should purchase proper now, however in comparison with different X570 mobos (lots of which high £300 / $300, if not £400 / $400), it’s most likely one of many quickest and higher worth boards I’ve examined thus far.
The MSI Gaming Edge doesn’t include as many USB ports as different X570 boards, however you continue to get a reasonably first rate number of USB 3.2 ports, plus a USB-C port.
Starting with basic PC efficiency, the MSI X570 Gaming Edge was capable of maintain its personal fairly properly towards its significantly costlier rivals. Indeed, with a Geekbench 4.Three single core of 5232, the MSI X570 Gaming Edge is round 3-4% quicker than the £390 / $380 Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi), £297 / $300 AsRock X570 Taichi and £390 / $360 Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master, whereas its multicore efficiency was just about similar. Here, the MSI completed with a rating of 32,296, which was solely a few hundred factors behind the Asus and AsRock (not even 1%), and a few thousand (3%) in entrance of the Gigabyte.
It additionally put in the very best efficiency in PCMark 10’s basic productiveness benchmark, too, ending with a rating of 6640 total. That’s a 17% enhance over MSI’s older X470 Gaming M7 AC that I reviewed when AMD’s 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs got here out.
The MSI X570 Gaming Edge can help as much as 128GB of DDR4 RAM with speeds ranging between 1866-2666MHz by default, however in the event you allow its OC mode it could possibly run RAM as much as 4400MHz.
As for the X570 Gaming Edge’s gaming efficiency, this as soon as once more produced the nippiest speeds in my suite of check games. Admittedly, we’re solely speaking a distinction of 1-3fps right here in a whole lot of instances, but it surely exhibits you don’t must spend nearly £400 / $400 on an X570 motherboard to get the very best speeds out of your new CPU.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, for instance, the MSI X570 Gaming Edge produced a mean body price of 111fps in its inside benchmark on Highest at 1080p with its TAA anti-aliasing enabled, which simply squeaks in entrance of the Gigabyte’s 110fps, the Asus’ 109fps and the AsRock’s 108fps. The MSI additionally had the sting at 1440p as properly, because it was the one one capable of keep in triple figures (100fps) once I ran the benchmark once more with the identical high quality settings. The relaxation completed with averages between 98-99fps.
Both of the MSI X570 Gaming Edge’s PCIe x16 slots help the brand new, super-fast PCIe 4.Zero customary, however solely the highest one runs on the full x16 pace. The second one runs at x4.
It additionally got here joint first with the Asus Crosshair in Total War: Warhammer II as properly. At 1080p on Ultra, each motherboards produced a mean of 107fps, whereas the Gigabyte was solely capable of muster a mean of 105fps, and the AsRock 106fps. The AsRock clawed it again at 1440p, thoughts, coming in with a mean of 94fps to match the MSI and Asus, however the Gigabyte was solely capable of handle 92fps.
In truth, it was solely Assassin’s Creed Odyssey the place the MSI fell behind, ending its inside benchmark with a mean of 74fps versus the 75-77fps scores achieved by the opposite three boards. However, contemplating it’s a lot cheaper than the opposite lot, there’s hardly a lot to complain about within the grand scheme of issues – particularly when it hit an similar 66fps common to the Gigabyte once I raised the decision to 1440p, which was solely a single body behind the Asus and AsRock.
The MSI X570 Gaming Edge has two M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs, however solely the highest one (beneath the heatsink) helps the super-fast PCIe 4.Zero customary.
As for SSD efficiency, I examined the MSI X570 Gaming Edge with each my customary PCIe 3.0 WD Black NVMe SSD in addition to Gigabyte’s Aorus NVMe Gen4 SSD to see the way it dealt with a PCIe 4.Zero system. Starting with the WD, this was just about consistent with the opposite three X570 boards I’ve examined, producing a random learn pace of 45.6MB/s and a random write pace of 150.4MB/s. The latter is maybe a bit gradual in comparison with the competitors, the quickest of which was capable of attain 178.7MB/s, however as soon as once more I’m not too bothered by this contemplating its lower cost.
Its PCIe 4.Zero efficiency, nevertheless, was quicker than Gigabyte’s Aorus Master board, and neck and neck with Asus’ Crosshair, coming in with 66.7MB/s random learn and 162.1MB/s random write. As for the AsRock, I wasn’t really capable of match the Gigabyte SSD onto that individual board, as its built-in heatsink panel didn’t go away sufficient room for it. Likewise, even when I’d eliminated the AsRock’s heatsink panel, I might have needed to have left it dangling round inside my case as a result of small cluster of wires attaching it to the principle board, which is neither very sensible or one thing you’d need to put up with long-term.
You’ll need to take away the heatsink to entry the MSI X570 Gaming Edge’s PCIe 4.0-enabled M.2 slot, however not less than the entire thing will be eliminated, not like different X570 boards the place it’s connected by a handful of wires.
All in all, then, the MSI X570 Gaming Edge appears like fairly good worth in the intervening time, not less than in comparison with the costlier X570 boards I’ve examined thus far. There are, admittedly, a few high quality of life niggles I’ve with this board – it doesn’t include a pleasant, easy backplate, for instance, nor does it include a entrance panel connector doodad like its costlier competitors. You additionally solely get two SATA cables, two M.2 screws (no stand-offs) and its Wi-Fi antenna included within the field, whereas different boards will get you much more.
However, when the MSI’s efficiency is both faster or simply as quick as these extra upmarket boards, I’m very happy to do with out these little extras for the sake of saving myself a bit of money. After all, why spend one other £100 / $100 on an equally quick motherboard when you would be placing that towards a greater graphics card, or one other, bigger SSD?
I’ll do my greatest to get extra X570 motherboards in for testing as quickly as I can, however for now, the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge (Wi-Fi) is a superb basis for anybody trying to get probably the most out of their new AMD Ryzen 3000 CPU with out breaking the financial institution.
